Out of curiosity, what is the least corrupt part?

I got called by one last Friday night. Kept him on the phone for almost an hour, playing along. Even gave him clues I wasn't on windows (ie, when he asked me to run eventviewer I described the output of top, including clueless worrying about zombie processes).

Finally told him I had to go pick up my daughter and that I'd been screwing with him. He called me a "miserable son of a bitch" and hung up.

Kinda felt that it was my duty to keep him occupied, after all each minute I was screwing with him was a minute he wasn't scamming some truly helpless user "out there" somewhere.

How would a system tell the difference between a driver and passenger in the car?

For myself I don't bother, but I'm sure hte rest of the passengers appreciated the fact my 3 year old could watch her Peppa Pig episodes vs. getting loud, annoying, etc. Not that my little snowflakes would do that - each of our children have traveled quite young, and the flight crew has always been amazed at their behavior (and in a good way too).

Especially with "failure to obey flight crew" charges as a threat

Maybe if the airlines want to cram so many folks into the space, they should look at preventing the seats from reclining at all. Even with plenty of room (ie, my 3 year old is in hte seat) a reclining seat will do its best to kill a laptop screen. Fortunately, I caught it quick enough to move the laptop, wait for it to be reclined, and reposition laptop so said 3 year old could keep watching Peppa Pig.

Duct-tapey but it works. Lets add some bailing wire and include a phone with a limited data plan that you can pair with via bluetooth or usb. That way, when both their internet connection *and* the box you are monitoring go tits up at the same time you can be notified as well.

PHP does the same/similar, but the === checks not just the data contained but the data type since PHP uses untyped variables.

So

$a=$b assigns the value in $b to $a
$a==$b returns true if the value contained is the same.
      $a="1"
      $b=1
$a==$b returns true

BUT... given
      $a="1"
      $b=1
$a===$b is FALSE since one is stored as a string and the other as an integer

Which kinda makes sense for a language that has untyped variables.....

Live in the country, another 500 feet away from teh big grey box and I couldn't even get my 1.5mb DSL. As is, I can get 3mb but can't use it because of too much signal loss.

I could switch back to dialup... I'd have to dig out an old computer to act as a dialup box and gateway for my LAN. I could switch to Dish, but the latency will suck for playing games.

Final option would be to go "dry line" and just buy DSL, but that isn't really changing my service - it just changes who I write a check to each month.

So yeah, if you live in an area with what amounts to a monopoly it is very hard to change.

The Porsche 918 is gonna cost you a whole lot more than $50k

But for $50k you can get a 356, 912, 914, VW Bug or Bus - anything that takes a 200mm clutch, and convert it to battery power from a few different vendors, and still have money left over (maybe, depending on which car you are using as your host).

tilem is a linux based TI emulator ... of course, you still need to get the appropriate ROM file(s) for hte calculator you want to emulate, but it is there.

A framer, roofer, brick layer, plumber, or electrician will often have more regular work and possibly a higher spendable income than an architect.

Both types are needed, which is why we have AS degrees from community colleges where students after a programming centric degree will usually have a semester or two on 3 to 5 languages (I had VB, C, C++, SQL, Java, and JavaScript plus the non-programming HTML coding in the mid and late 90s - current degree track is C++/C#, Java, Objective C, SQL, JavaScript and again HTML/CSS stuff). Sure, you don't master a language, but you learn the basics of programming in each language and with project based grading you actually have a small portfolio of real programs/applications when you graduate. By contrast, the large state University just a few miles down the road from us teaches exactly one semester of one language - Java - in their software engineering degree track.

And yet, some of us still play QuakeWorld on a regular basis. There are still servers out there, setting up LAN play is trivial, and for me the fun has always been playing with others - I've only played single player enough to figure out controls, learn a few maps, and test moves out.

It is an accounting trick.

Schools are supposed to be funded via property taxes, etc. which all goes into a general pool.

So the states pass laws like allowing a lottery - "10 cents of every dollar sold will go towards education". Sounds great right? Well... until they take away the *normal* funding thru the regular sources, and all the schools have left for their budgets is the lottery monies.

Rinse and repeat.

Of course, occasionally you'll get the limited time tax - like "impose a .25% extra on sales tax in $whatever county to pay for this new school/science building/library/whatever". Then that year's is done, so they put a new one up for again a quarter percent sales tax increase to fund this other thing. Again, rinse and repeat.

And Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbs, etc.

Has happened quite a bit in the past... even now, some firearms have "California models" vs. "everywhere else". Example would be the GSG and/or SIG 1911 clones in 22lr that have threaded barrels for "everywhere else" and the thread protector is either silver soldered in place or a different barrel is used for the California model.

A less inflammatory example would be the Porsche 930 from '84 to '89. The California emissions laws wouldn't allow them to be imported into the US at all (greymarket cars from Canada aside, and now the old age exemption). Porsche solved this by offering the factory Turbo Look option, priced about half way between the normal 911 model and the 930 model. To make them, they took a 930, removed the rear windshield wiper, the turbo script under the whale tail, and the turbo engine, putting in the 3.2l normal engine. These were known as "M491" cars after the option package code, and just over 1000 were produced in the 5 year model span (420 for the '83 model year, dwindling down to 15 or so in '89 and almost all were coupes - very few cabriolets were made, and only a few targa models), almost all of which were for US delivery. Buyers got that great wide back end sexy body look, the better brakes, suspension, etc. of the 930, but the regular 3.2l engine that could pass California's emissions laws.